I’m joining in the global A-Z blog party today with an alphabet dedicated to learning how to write. Here are twenty-six fun, creative, tried-and-tested ideas that you can use with your children to help them enjoy their first steps in learning how to write. There are ideas here for sensory alphabets, making spellings fun, encouraging creative storytelling and bringing writing into your everyday imaginary play.
If you’re looking for a fun idea to get your child writing, try making a Zig Zag Book. It’s a great way to encourage beginners to have a go at writing. The format of the book is fun and quirky and lets them do lots of drawings, adding in a little writing too.
We’ve hit on a winning combination this week and discovered a super fun way to encourage lots of reading and writing. Here’s how we’re using speech bubbles to bring giggles to learning to read and write.
These stickers tales are lots of fun! They help children learn how to write a story and can give a great spark to their imaginations. I find they are especially good for reluctant writers and kids who love to draw. Here’s how we use stickers to write a story and make our very own books.
Here’s another idea in our recipes for play series, this time showing you how to make colored salt, which is great for sensory play and learning.
Click to play on the video above to see our sensory tub masterclass. You’ll learn how to make a sensory tub for your children using simple materials, the benefits of sensory tubs for children, and how to use a sensory tub to teach children about math, literacy, science and fine motor skills.
You’ll also see lots of ideas for sensory tub fillings plus find out how to get great printables to add to your tubs. Subscribe to NurtureStore’s YouTube channel to get more sensory play videos!
You only need two ingredients to make coloured salt: salt of course, and some paint. We use a water-based poster paint (tempera). You can add in some glitter for a bit of extra sparkle if you are so inclined.
To make colored salt all you need to do is:
squeeze some of the paint into your salt
mix it thoroughly
then lay out on a tray or in a tub overnight to dry
You can use whatever color you like – we’re going with black for some Halloween-themed salt. If you store the salt in an airtight container, it will last for ages. It’s great as a base for sensory play and particularly good for practising mark making, writing and spellings.
We’re using our salt tray to do some writing and spelling work. You can use a finger, pencil or paint brush to write in the salt. It will hold the shape of the letters so you can see them, and it offers a great sensory experience of the words, as you can feel the words as you write. We decided to make a black cat to go on the end of our paint brush, to give a Halloween-theme, and to please my cat-mad daughter.
Then we made some word spiders, to use as a guide when writing our words in the salt. {You can print off a template of a spider below.}
Cut out the body and legs of the spider. Stick them together. Use a white pencil to draw on eyes and a mouth, and to write your spelling words on the legs.
You can write on any words you like, to suit what your child is learning.
You might want to just write letters for very young children, or let them simply try out making some marks.
You might like to write on word families (eight words starting with b, or starting with ch…)
Or write some sight words, or your child’s weekly spelling or vocabulary words.
Then you’re all ready to try out some salt writing. You only need a shallow layer of salt in the bottom of the tray – give it a try and see how if feels to write your words
I’m always looking for ways to make our learning fun, so here’s a printable you can use for alphabet games, especially focused on the often-mixed-up letters b, d and p. It’s something I’m working on with my daughter right now, and with the addition of our hungry monsters, the learning is coming along with lots of giggles too.
Alphabet game :: letter sorting [Read more…]